EW Play (HWO) + DP 9 = DISASTER?
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 6:00 pm
Hello MotuNation - this is my first post. I hope I'm not posting to the wrong branch of the forum...
It may be that the time for full orchestra mockups in 1 PC has arrived - PC's are amazing these days.
But we've all heard the gripes and groans about the perpetually buggy Play engine from EW , and perhaps even after all these years it could still be just as buggy as ever, but I'm thinking I may be experiencing more than the typically buggy Play, and I hope someone has some clues.
I spent the weekend configuring a large orchestral template in DP 9, on a high performance PC.
MIDI multi-record on
20 "Master" MIDI tracks (each one for a different instrument, such as violins I, violin II, cello, bass, piccolo, flute, etc.). All set as follows:
- input from MIDI keyboard (Roland RD700GX-any),
- output to a unique channel on a soft MIDI port
- record enable selections are used selectively depending on which instrument is desired.
320 "Slave" MIDI tracks - each one for a different articulation (16 articulations for each of the 20 instruments above). All slave tracks set up as follows:
- input from a unique channel on a soft MIDI port; note these are distinct from the channel/ports used to carry output from the Master MIDI tracks mentioned above
- output to a unique Instrument track, in groups of 16 (i.e., there are 20 groups of 16 tracks, within 1 group of 16 tracks each track outputs to a unique MIDI channel of the group's target Instrument track)
- all record enables are selected on all of these tracks all of the time (these tracks are merely used as conduits to the instrument tracks)
20 Instrument tracks - each set up with an instance of EW PLAY
- input: each track receives input from 16 unique "Slave" (articulation) MIDI tracks, so data for each articulation is on a different MIDI channel
- output: each instrument outputs to a stereo audio buss corresponding to the appropriate section of the orchestra
Outside of DP (in the same PC), there are soft MIDI ports set up by an application called LoopMIDI. These ports are used to connect DP to another program called TransMIDIFier. This program does some clever re-routing based on patch changes:
- on each of 20 MIDI channels comming from the Master tracks in DP, it looks for program (aka patch) change messages, and routes the MIDI data stream to one of 320 patch-number-selected MIDI output channels
- 320 output MIDI channels are then accessed in DP via soft MIDI ports
This exporting and importing of the same but re-routed MIDI data allows the use of patch changes to select between 16 articulations per master track. Seems rather tortured, but since PLAY doesn't support patch change messages or user defined key switches, this approach isn't completely nuts.
The above was configured without any samples loaded into any of the 20 instances of PLAY. Thoroughly tested the MIDI traffic functionality and everything worked perfectly. Awesome.
I then loaded 10 or so articulations of HW Strings Violin I into the first instance of play, and 10 articulations of Violin II into a 2nd instance, Viola, Cello & Bass similarly. About 30GB of sample memory used. Nothing exploded - whew, so time to record and play back a few lines to assess things prior to loading up the samples for the entire orchestra template.
Weird •••• starts happening:
(a) Random blasts of sample playback audio from Play instance number 1 every time any record enable is selected or de-selected for any of the master tracks.
(b) While recording simple passages, or sometimes just pressing record enable or selecting a patch for a track on the track screen before recording starts, random note-stuck-on fun happens - oddly not even notes that were ever played. DP's panic command doesn't work to shut down the offending sounder - have to track down which instance of play it is, open it and choose "stop all voices" from its main menu.
(c) Strange random delays - hit play and nothing happens for a while. Sometimes ever (playback indicator just shows a red bar).
(d) Occasionally Play starts playing some strange repeating electronic tones - nothing that sounds like the samples miss-triggering, more like a big robotic brain fart that won't stop.
(e) Random crashes - yes, to top it all off, suddenly DP just disappears! Re-start the program, reload the samples, stable for a little while, then same the same weird shits starts, then the program disappears again. This happened multiple times. Totally non-workable - cannot use this tool set with these challenges.
I am using the latest versions of PLAY, HWO, and DP 9, running on Windows 10 64bit Home Edition.
Processor load indicator never climbs above 30% or so.
Rebooted (more than once), no help.
Disabled all overclocking for CPU & RAM. No improvement.
Checked out the CPU and RAM temperatures - not even that warm...
I hope I don't have to make the sad move back to Cakewalk Sonar - but it was more stable than this while working with multiple EW PLAY instances; I'm hopeful someone has some experience that might help here...
The hardware environment:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Extreme Ed i7-5960X/3GHz/8 Core/20MB Cash
MOBO: ASUS X99 PRO
RAM: 64 GB DDR 3
HD (System): 1TB SSD (Samsung)
HD (Sample Library 1): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
HD (Sample Library 2): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
HD (Audio Recording): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
HD (Video): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
Audio Interface: MOTU 1248 (via USB 2.0)
MIDI Interface: MOTU MIDI Express XT
MIDI Control Surfaces: 1 Mackie MCU & 2 Extenders, 1 Behringer BC2000
MIDI Keyboard Controller: Roland RD700GX
Thanks!
It may be that the time for full orchestra mockups in 1 PC has arrived - PC's are amazing these days.
But we've all heard the gripes and groans about the perpetually buggy Play engine from EW , and perhaps even after all these years it could still be just as buggy as ever, but I'm thinking I may be experiencing more than the typically buggy Play, and I hope someone has some clues.
I spent the weekend configuring a large orchestral template in DP 9, on a high performance PC.
MIDI multi-record on
20 "Master" MIDI tracks (each one for a different instrument, such as violins I, violin II, cello, bass, piccolo, flute, etc.). All set as follows:
- input from MIDI keyboard (Roland RD700GX-any),
- output to a unique channel on a soft MIDI port
- record enable selections are used selectively depending on which instrument is desired.
320 "Slave" MIDI tracks - each one for a different articulation (16 articulations for each of the 20 instruments above). All slave tracks set up as follows:
- input from a unique channel on a soft MIDI port; note these are distinct from the channel/ports used to carry output from the Master MIDI tracks mentioned above
- output to a unique Instrument track, in groups of 16 (i.e., there are 20 groups of 16 tracks, within 1 group of 16 tracks each track outputs to a unique MIDI channel of the group's target Instrument track)
- all record enables are selected on all of these tracks all of the time (these tracks are merely used as conduits to the instrument tracks)
20 Instrument tracks - each set up with an instance of EW PLAY
- input: each track receives input from 16 unique "Slave" (articulation) MIDI tracks, so data for each articulation is on a different MIDI channel
- output: each instrument outputs to a stereo audio buss corresponding to the appropriate section of the orchestra
Outside of DP (in the same PC), there are soft MIDI ports set up by an application called LoopMIDI. These ports are used to connect DP to another program called TransMIDIFier. This program does some clever re-routing based on patch changes:
- on each of 20 MIDI channels comming from the Master tracks in DP, it looks for program (aka patch) change messages, and routes the MIDI data stream to one of 320 patch-number-selected MIDI output channels
- 320 output MIDI channels are then accessed in DP via soft MIDI ports
This exporting and importing of the same but re-routed MIDI data allows the use of patch changes to select between 16 articulations per master track. Seems rather tortured, but since PLAY doesn't support patch change messages or user defined key switches, this approach isn't completely nuts.
The above was configured without any samples loaded into any of the 20 instances of PLAY. Thoroughly tested the MIDI traffic functionality and everything worked perfectly. Awesome.
I then loaded 10 or so articulations of HW Strings Violin I into the first instance of play, and 10 articulations of Violin II into a 2nd instance, Viola, Cello & Bass similarly. About 30GB of sample memory used. Nothing exploded - whew, so time to record and play back a few lines to assess things prior to loading up the samples for the entire orchestra template.
Weird •••• starts happening:
(a) Random blasts of sample playback audio from Play instance number 1 every time any record enable is selected or de-selected for any of the master tracks.
(b) While recording simple passages, or sometimes just pressing record enable or selecting a patch for a track on the track screen before recording starts, random note-stuck-on fun happens - oddly not even notes that were ever played. DP's panic command doesn't work to shut down the offending sounder - have to track down which instance of play it is, open it and choose "stop all voices" from its main menu.
(c) Strange random delays - hit play and nothing happens for a while. Sometimes ever (playback indicator just shows a red bar).
(d) Occasionally Play starts playing some strange repeating electronic tones - nothing that sounds like the samples miss-triggering, more like a big robotic brain fart that won't stop.
(e) Random crashes - yes, to top it all off, suddenly DP just disappears! Re-start the program, reload the samples, stable for a little while, then same the same weird shits starts, then the program disappears again. This happened multiple times. Totally non-workable - cannot use this tool set with these challenges.
I am using the latest versions of PLAY, HWO, and DP 9, running on Windows 10 64bit Home Edition.
Processor load indicator never climbs above 30% or so.
Rebooted (more than once), no help.
Disabled all overclocking for CPU & RAM. No improvement.
Checked out the CPU and RAM temperatures - not even that warm...
I hope I don't have to make the sad move back to Cakewalk Sonar - but it was more stable than this while working with multiple EW PLAY instances; I'm hopeful someone has some experience that might help here...
The hardware environment:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Extreme Ed i7-5960X/3GHz/8 Core/20MB Cash
MOBO: ASUS X99 PRO
RAM: 64 GB DDR 3
HD (System): 1TB SSD (Samsung)
HD (Sample Library 1): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
HD (Sample Library 2): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
HD (Audio Recording): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
HD (Video): 1TB SSD (Samsung SSD 850)
Audio Interface: MOTU 1248 (via USB 2.0)
MIDI Interface: MOTU MIDI Express XT
MIDI Control Surfaces: 1 Mackie MCU & 2 Extenders, 1 Behringer BC2000
MIDI Keyboard Controller: Roland RD700GX
Thanks!